Daughters of Rome (43 page)

C
ORNELIA
had always loved Saturnalia.

Everything about it. The cleaning first, scouring her house top to bottom for the new year. Then the traditional feast, where for once the slaves reclined on the couches and the masters served them. Piso hadn’t enjoyed that part—he said it wasn’t dignified—but Cornelia never minded going around the couches with a wine flagon while her slaves grinned at her self-consciously. What harm did it do to switch places once a year?
It keeps us all humble.
And then after that the more usual festivities: Diana fretting herself into a fever over the Saturnalia races, Gaius so self-conscious as he led the traditional revelries, Lollia getting tipsy and shrieking
“Io Saturnalia!”
and Marcella sitting there, eternally amused by all the antics. Saturnalia: the year-end festival.

This year Cornelia didn’t think there would be any festivities. No gifts. No merriment. This year there would only be death.

“Domina!” A wide-eyed maid clutched at her arm. “I heard there is fighting at the Milvian Bridge!”

“I’m sure there is, Zoe.” Cornelia made a mark on her wax tablet, pushing back the nausea that had assailed her all morning. “Have you finished counting those linens?”

“No, but—”

“Count them, Zoe.” No banquets and games, but at least Cornelia could see that the house was given its Saturnalia cleaning before it was sacked. She was pleased to discover that Tullia wasn’t a terribly good housekeeper, for all her bustling with keys and menus. Clearly her sister-in-law was more interested in making sure the slaves weren’t stealing food or making love in the spare bedrooms than in keeping her corners clean.

Cornelia gave the shivering maid a gentle push toward the linen cupboards. “Busy yourself, Zoe. It will make the time pass faster.”

She made her way down to the
culina
. “Has the week’s supply of bread been baked?”

“No—but Domina, the doorkeeper says he saw troops advancing toward the Colline Gate—”

“The bread must be baked. See to it.” Cornelia’s eye caught a cluster of little boys craning round eyes through the window shutters. “And put the potboys to work cleaning all the glass.”

“Yes, Domina.” The slaves were tense, resentful, and frightened, but Cornelia lashed them into work. If they worked, they would not panic. If
she
worked,
she
would not panic. Easier to inspect the mosaics in the atrium and decide if they needed retiling than to think about the envoys Emperor Vitellius had sent that morning with peace terms to the army now camped on Rome’s doorstep. Easier to evaluate the cloth stores and make notes for the new year’s weaving than think of the rumors that the Moesian legions had rejected all terms and come pouring into the city.

“They’re advancing in three columns,” Marcella had reported breathlessly a few hours ago. “The main body is advancing down the Flaminian Way across the Milvian Bridge, but there’s a second column coming toward the Aurelian Gate and a third force along the Salarian Way.”

“Where are you going?” Cornelia noted her sister’s pink cheeks and bright eyes. “You can’t go out in this madness!”

“I want to see what happens.”

“’Cella—”
But Marcella tore out of her grip and dashed out of the house, as eagerly as another woman might have dashed to a lover.
As eagerly as I dashed to a lover, anyway.
Cornelia looked after her sister a moment, uttering a prayer to Juno—Minerva—anyone who might be listening—and then set herself back to cleaning. Surely the fighting would cease once Vitellius’s forces were defeated. Then the troops would be taken in hand.

“Domina,” the understeward moaned, “legionaries are storming through the Gardens of Asiaticus—we must flee—”

“We will not flee.” Cornelia borrowed a little of Drusus’s crisp centurion snap. “Do as you’re told, and we will be safe.”

Drusus. In the slums, he’d be safe enough—fighting would surely be concentrated around the Forum, the half-burned Capitol, the Campus Martius, and the city gates. Cornelia had sent him a note the day Gaius and Tullia left Rome.
They found out
, she wrote, and then added a disjointed
Be safe—please be safe
.
Don’t reply, and don’t come for me.

“Where is Zoe?” Cornelia asked, looking around for her maid.

The steward’s eyes shifted sideways. “I don’t know, Domina.”

“Find someone else to dust those cobwebs, then.”

By midmorning Cornelia started to hear distant crashes, muffled shouting. She summoned the litter-bearers to carry a note to Lollia—surely she would rather wait it all out here than alone in her grandfather’s massive cave of a house—but the litter-bearers had all gone missing, and no note could be sent. By midday all the male slaves were gone. By midafternoon, Cornelia didn’t have enough maids left to lift a massive feather bolster for its yearly turn.

“Well.” She sat down rather suddenly on the feather bed. “That’s it, I suppose.”

“Domina,” one of the slave girls whispered. “There is fighting in Forum Julium—by the Circus Maximus—by the Temple of Minerva—”

“Is there?” Cornelia pushed back the surge of nausea again. “Then you may as well flee if you want to.”

They scattered without another word. Cornelia lay back on the bolster, curling into a ball. Perhaps Lollia would come, even without a note, and bring Diana with her. They had to be frightened, alone in Lollia’s great cave of a house. Or Marcella would come back . . . oh, why had she gone out? Why? Cornelia wanted her sister’s hand over her own, her sister’s cool voice explaining all the logical reasons why the world would come right again.

Maybe the world wasn’t going to come right again.

The sound of a banging door downstairs sent Cornelia bolt upright. Heavy footsteps up the stairs—surely the fighting hadn’t spread as far as the Palatine Hill,
surely
—she looked around her for a weapon, frantic, but then a familiar voice shouted
“Cornelia!”
She flew across the room and fell into Drusus’s arms almost before he burst through the door.

“Gods—” He gripped her with violent relief, his voice thick against her hair. “I thought you’d have left the city by now—why didn’t you leave?”

“Why didn’t you?” Cornelia said against the rough wool of his tunic. “I told you not to come—”

“You thought I’d
listen
?”

“But if someone here recognized you, the treason warrant—”

“Everyone’s got more important things to worry about today than minor traitors.” Drusus pulled back, eyes sweeping her anxiously. “Don’t you have any guards? Slaves with cudgels, even—”

“All fled.”

“Then we should flee too. The fighting around the Campus Martius is bad, and it’s worse by the Colline Gate. We’ll get out now, back to the slums—no one will bother bringing the fighting to the slums—”

“I can’t.” She shook her head. “My brother fled, but my sister and cousins are all here in the city. If they need to flee, they might come here—”

“Then we barricade ourselves in.” He went through the house like a one-man legion, barring doors, curtaining windows, dragging heavy shelves and barrels before the gate.

Cornelia watched him. “Drusus . . .”

“What?” He pushed his sweat-damp hair off his broad forehead. He was bare-armed in a rough tunic, his
gladius
belted at his waist again.

She smiled. “Nothing.” Let him barricade; it gave him something to do.

He dropped down on the couch at her side, taking her fingers and plaiting them with his own. “Your note—you said your brother found out? Is that why he refused to take you? I’ll flog him around the city, abandoning his sister like that—”

“No, I refused to go. But he did find out. Not about you, but that I’ve been—” A shrug. “Disgracing myself, he put it.”

“I’m sorry—” Drusus began, but Cornelia laid a finger over his mouth.

“Sshh. I’m glad you’re here.”

“I won’t leave you till it’s safe.” He wrapped her in his arms, hugging her close against the warmth of his chest, and the words trembled on her lips again.
Drusus, I should have had my bleeding when we came back from Tarracina two months ago, but I didn’t. Drusus, I never used any of Lollia’s Egyptian tricks because I thought I was barren. Drusus, I was married eight years without any sign of a child, but now—now I think I am pregnant.

She felt the pressure of his sword against her side and bit the words back. It was too late to tell, too late to flee—too late to do anything, this violent Saturnalia afternoon, but wait.

 

P
ULLING
her
palla
up over her hair, Diana shifted into a swift jog. She’d seen Llyn move like a wolf in a ground-eating lope, and she certainly couldn’t match him, but she was still fast and fit after so many months of driving his horses. Just a quick scout through the streets and she’d go back for Lollia, who sat stitching halfheartedly on a bit of embroidery in the big empty atrium of her grandfather’s house and trying to keep calm. All morning they’d waited in restless silence, thinking the city gates couldn’t possibly be breached. But by noon the Milvian Gate had broken, and the Colline Gate, and enemy troops were forcing their way in.

Lollia had looked up with white all around her eyes, like a horse ready to bolt. “Let’s get the guards,” Diana had said. “We’ll go wait with Cornelia and Marcella—they’re farther up the hill from the fighting.”

But every guard Lollia had hired to protect her had fled.

Diana stuck to the back streets, scouting with watchful eyes. Women stood in doorways, hard-faced and wary, thrusting their children behind them. A tavern still stood open for business, drunken shouts rising from within. A row of vendor stalls—a few were open and Diana watched a housewife calmly feeling through a basket of apples before handing over a few coppers for the least-bruised fruit. A child tugged at her skirts, looking up at Diana with no sign of fear as she skidded to a halt.

They could make their way through, she and Lollia. If they skirted the Forum, and Lollia left off all her jewels . . .

Diana looked down the slope of the street, in the direction of the broken gates. Distantly she heard a roar—she’d think it was thunder, if she didn’t know it was bloodshed.

It wasn’t so far to the faction stables from here.

Diana hesitated only a moment.

I’ll just see if the horses have been moved to safety.
That was all she wanted to know. The Reds faction director fled the city a week ago, taking his teams with him, but she didn’t know about the Blues. Were they stupid enough to think Vitellius would be able to shield them?

She took a detour around the Forum, circling through a maze of back streets. Normally she wouldn’t walk alone in such places, but the small streets were empty today, the windows shuttered, eyes glittering through cracks in doors. Two men darted past carrying bulging sacks, a mad beggar crouched mumbling in a vestibule, and over everything hung a strange silence.

Diana picked up her jog again.
The Anemoi.
She wouldn’t stay long. Just a quick look into the Blues stables to make sure the horses were safe, and then she’d go back home and take Lollia to safety. By morning everything would be done one way or another. Gods only knew where Vitellius was now—she heard some rumor he’d fled to his family home on the Aventine and barricaded himself inside, but who knew what was true?

Diana halted in the entrance of the Blues stables, putting her hands to her knees and panting.
“Bassus!”
she called the Blues faction director, but her voice echoed unanswered. A broken length of blue-dyed rein was trampled forgotten in the straw, and a bucket rolled disconsolately by the water troughs. She saw a guard or two, Praetorians by their armor, and a few souls wandering at the end of the passage, but no one halted Diana. Just refugees looking for a place to hide from the rampaging soldiers. The Blues director and the horses were clearly long gone, and Diana’s heart eased. The Anemoi were safe. She came to the first set of blue-painted stalls where they had been installed with such hateful pomp, looking over the first gate—and froze. Her fleet-footed Zephyrus was there, looking at her through his red forelock with a calm liquid eye. Notus put his head over the next stall, and in two more steps she saw that Eurus and her savage Boreas were there too, and beyond them the famous team of blood bays. The Blues had fled in panic, and they’d left all their horses behind.

“Oh, you bastards,” she gritted out and spun toward the shed where they kept the harness. Another few hours and the horses would all be gone, claimed by grinning legionaries who knew what a good horse was worth. The blood bays would be split up and led off by four new owners, sold or traded a dozen times by morning, never to race together again. But that wouldn’t happen to her Anemoi. “You, help me,” she called to one of the slaves she saw edging about at the end of the passage, but he just stared at her.

She dived into the harness shed, coming out with a pair of bridles thrown over each shoulder, and swung into Boreas’s stall first. “Come with me and no biting,” she started to say, but then she halted and the first bridle fell into the straw at her feet.

“Hello, girl,” Emperor Vitellius said softly.

He sat in the corner of Boreas’s stall, arms resting limp over his massive belly. Manure stained his purple robe, and he picked at it idly. A wineskin lay flat and empty at his side. A guard stood in the corner, nervously fingering his
gladius
as he looked at Diana, but Vitellius jerked his double chin and the guard edged around Boreas and tramped out of the stall.

“Caesar,” Diana said. “Gods’ wheels, what are you doing here?”

“I was going to my family’s home on the Aventine, but—” Vitellius shrugged. “There’s fighting around there. You know there’s fighting?”

Diana stepped closer. “Why aren’t you in the palace?”

“Oh—” A restless movement set his heavy jowls wobbling. “Never liked that palace. Everyone’s getting ready to bolt. Don’t think I don’t know it! Alienus betrayed me, and now all my own guards are looking to do the same. I liked Alienus . . .”